Ofcom’s Ed Richards: roaming an ‘obstacle to business’
[pronounced ~ ob-stack-el ~ as seen in O' Brother Where Art Thou?]
Folks, Ofcom this week show signs of a consumer-oriented revitalisation on the subject of rip-offs in the telecom sector. Basically, Ofcom are urging tougher European action (or industry moderation) on roaming charges, voice, data and text.
Ed Richards’ comments are here. Here are some of the best nuggets:
‘These prices represent a significant price hurdle to the use of mobile internet while abroad. We want to see industry take the initiative on this issue or we may need to see further action at the European level since national regulators are unable to address these issues unilaterally.’
‘My biggest concern is the effect on businesses which increasingly depends on connectivity and in particular mobile connectivity.’
‘There have been some reductions which we expect to see reflected in the next set of ERG figures. These are very welcome – but I think we need further reductions by a wider range of providers.’
‘Ofcom, working with other national regulators across Europe, is highlighting the potential importance of this issue, based on the work of ERG. We intend to take this forward by working with colleagues in the ERG and the European Commission to examine a range of questions on how text and data roaming could be regulated in the future, if the market fails to deliver lower prices.’
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Maybe tough action on broadband is next for Ofcom?
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I was interested in his repeated references to the ERG and the collaborative work being done by that organisation – could this be part of a maneuvering tactic to position the ERG as useful / effective etc in light of its fairly likely (but not impossible) subsuming into Reding’s proposed Market Authority? Theres no way Ofcom can do anything about roaming rates on its own, it would need the ERG to act as a single body which it hasn’t been able to do very well – if it got it act together and put forward something on data roaming before the Commission’s own review at the end of this year, it could be a powerful bargaining chip in the debate over the European Market Authority.